PS3 Apparently A Computer 440
Rinzai writes to mention an article on Gamasutra, noting a statement by Ken Kutaragi where the CEO states that the PS3 is a computer, not a console. From the article: "He went on to outline a scenario where many parts of the PS3 were upgradeable, much more like a PC, noting: 'Since PS3 is a computer, there are no models but configurations', and continuing (though talking in the theoretical): 'I think it's okay to release a [extended PS3] configuration every year'. It's clear from the comments that Sony is indicating that it will be possible to upgrade hard drives and perhaps even other components easily."
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
'Luck with that one guys.
That wont save it (Score:2, Insightful)
Even with the "extra" feature of being a computer, at the price it is, it will most probably sell very badly, if not fail.
Sorry Sony, you made a *serious* mistake. Remember that money is one of the most important things in this world, even if it comes and goes.
You had me at 'apparently' (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, is there any distinction anymore? Does being easily upgradeable magically make it a "computer"? I still consider my original NES - having a processor, input interface, and the ability to read instructions on ROMs and provide output - "basically a computer".
This sounds more like a change in marketing strategy than anything else (compare "hey, the PS3 is twice the cost of these other consoles" to "hey, this PS3-computer-thingy is only half the cost of my desktop computer!") Either way, I wouldn't be pleased knowing that after shelling out $600 I will have the option to pay more next year to keep the thing updated.
Disclaimer: I'm a Nintendo fanboy and have never had any interest in PlayStation consoles.
They're technically all computers (Score:5, Insightful)
Ours is better! We swear! (Score:5, Insightful)
What else could be upgraded besides the hard drive? I really doubt you'll be able to swap in a new CPU or GPU. Maybe RAM like you could upgrade on the N64. (though I have my doubts) Or, does he mean that new PS3s will be more powerful than the old ones and that the old ones won't be upgradable?
What would be the point of continuing to call it a PS3 then? People who bought a PS3 for $600 in 2006 would be homicidal if a "PS3" game was released a couple years down the line that couldn't be played (or maybe it could only be played at a low resolution/framerate) on their old PS3. People expect a game for a console to just work in that console.
Also, wasn't the PS2's official title "computer entertainment system"? Look how that worked out.
Whoa there (Score:3, Insightful)
Please note that nowhere does it state that the CONSUMER will be able to upgrade hard drives or other components easily. In fact, what they are implying is that they will release a different "upgraded-from-core" model every year. I would assume that one would have to buy the entire thing to get any upgraded components. After all, I don't think Joe Sixpack is going to be comfortable swapping out a hard drive on a PS3 any more than on a "real" computer.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Argh. What arrogance and stupidity. What's next, the executives of Sony all line up and moon us?
stupid. stupid, stupid... (Score:3, Insightful)
Limited, carefully-controlled upgrades can succeed (e.g. memory expansion for N64), but so far has only worked when distributed as a pack-in in a popular game. Significant console upgrades (e.g. every upgrade ever released for the Genesis) have all failed in the marketplace, for the reasons described above.
Sony owned the market. The PS3 was a guaranteed success. A license to print money. And now they seem fixated on painting a target on their feet, merrily humming away, completely ignoring what their potential customers actually want. Nintendo could easily leverage this into a return to first place in the market, if they play their cards right.
Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, I thought the whole point of a console was to give everyone the same configuration so that developers can target a single stable platform without having to worry about configuration issues....
So, if it's a "computer", does that mean that they'll let me in to hack to my hearts content without any sort of encryption key BS? Or are they still going to try to lock me out of my own "computer"?
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Sony could produce a device which some or all of those things, that they could score a major coup. After, all most people only have so many plug points and space by their TV. If this thing can play discs, then why not store them too. They could sweeten the deal for themselves by having a built-in movie download service for $$$.
The system has the potential, but it remains to be seen if Sony being Sony will cut off its nose to spite its face. Again.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Because a hot-shit graphics card will run you $400; You can get the PS3 for the price of a graphics card, DVD-ROM, case, and a decent power supply, and you still don't have motherboard, cpu, memory, hard disk, or a game controller.
Also because the PS3 is supposed to play PS1, PS2, and PS3 games, as well as Blu-Ray movies (FWIW). PC plays PS1 games, and not necessarily all that well.
Re:You had me at 'apparently' (Score:3, Insightful)
Do they want to fail? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's getting so bad that the more times Kutaragi shoots off his mouth, the more I think that he is purposely sabotaging the PS3 out of anger that he was not named CEO. I thought Nintendo requiring a $50 (?) upgrade to their $200 N64 was crazy. This is just ridiculous.
Come on, Ken. You are selling this idea to people who pay some goon at Best Buy to install their new sound card.
Watch, in two years $600 will get you a PS3 with BD-ROM with a decent speed, a HD big enough to actually give you some advantage loading your games, and enough RAM to actually play the new games.
There is absolutely no reason to buy a PS3 before Sony makes their plans perfectly clear in this regard. Fuzzy quotes about what you might need in the future to make your $600 paperweight playable again is an insult to any potential customers.
Re:You had me at 'apparently' (Score:2, Insightful)
Standardized parts and upgrades were a result of the Gun manufacturing industry weren't they?
So, in effect, Computers aren't Computers at all, they're guns!
Now that the PS3 is a gun it should have NRA support n'est pas?
This is to keep up with competition... (Score:2, Insightful)
While I agree with most people here that the PS3 will be overpriced, I want all that functionality to be built in. I want my game console to also play DVD's, MP3 from my computer, record TV, output digital Audio in every format known to man (DTS 7.1 anybody?), download new expansions to existing games through the Internet, etc. Come one people. Why would you not want this stuff? Even if you use only part of the functionality of the system, it still adds to the value if you use that part. Plus Microsoft screwed people by offering reletively small hard drives with the 360 when it shipped. I hope that Sony will offer 300GB upgrades because frankly, I could use them.
And lastly dammit, I want a keyboard! It's freakin' hard typing in chat with a controller! Just allow the device to use a wireless standard keyboard or a USB one like the PS2 does already.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not to say I'm in favor of this... but having those standards in place, I feel, would greatly help PC developers.They'd be shooting for a 2008b hardware configuration when developing their game rather than shooting in the dark. I realize I haven't really explained this too well and if somebody cares to elaborate further then feel free. I also realize that this would require a certain level of honesty and cooperation among hardware manufacturers that likely won't be happeneing any time soon, just a thought.
Already exists (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, I give up. Sony's headed for disaster. (Score:2, Insightful)
Holy crap. Sony has gone insane.
As other posters have pointed out, this has been tried and tried and tried and tried. Intellivision. Atari. Coleco. Even priced efficiently, it's never worked and for good reason: the WHOLE POINT of owning a console is to ONLY HAVE A SINGLE, STANDARD CONFIG!!
I bought Half Life 2 when it came out, and I still haven't been able to play the damned thing despite owning a machine far more powerful than the specs require. The thing keeps crashing, and after several months of watching the Steam forums Valve came up with a workaround for the many, many others who had the same problem: go into BIOS and jiggle your memory timing! Well, that's great. Only my particular motherboard doesn't have that option, and even if it did, I sure wouldn't be screwing around with BIOS just to get a single program running. Far as I know, Valve *still* hasn't fixed the problem; as far as they're concerned, it's already fixed. Just jiggle your timing, guys.
That whole experience drove me away from Valve for good and back to my trusty PS2 for gaming. Yeah, games have bugs, but if a game doesn't work then it doesn't work *anywhere*. In the console world, you simply never have game developers telling you to jiggle your friggin' memory timings just to get their damned product to run. Again, that's the whole advantage of being a console gamer over being a PC gamer; take that away and no thanks, I'll keep my real computer, thanks. Microsoft isn't this stupid and my slimline PS2 is doing just fine.
Dammit, Sony, don't you realize that Microsoft isn't your greatest competitive challenge here? Or Nintendo? Are you so stupidly blind that you can't see that the PS3's most dangerous competitor is the PS2? You know, that extremely stable platform with thousands of quality titles that developers know inside and out, the one that isn't trying to be anything other than what it is? Don't you realize that there are millions of folks like me who aren't debating between the PS3 and the 360, but over whether or not to ditch our trusty PS2s for this trick pony that's looking more and more like a '48 Tucker [hfmgv.org]?
Re:Makes sense (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Makes sense (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually you can. ePSXe will play your PSX games, all you need to do is grab your PSX's BIOS (which can be done fairly easily a variety of legal ways).
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
Translation: We don't need Microsoft
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think about it, aside from RAM, there is really no reason to upgrade the core of the PS3. It's not like there is a CPU/GPU arms race that Sony has to keep up with, because its competitors have fixed CPUs and GPUs. And its not like the stuff that people would do with a computer hooked up to their TV would require upgrading every year.
It's really cynical to believe that Sony is just monumentally stupid, and trying to go after the regular PC market with the PS3. It makes for a nice circle-jerk, but its probably not an accurate prediction. For more likely is that Sony saw the projections that showed online games (poker, flash sites, etc), becoming a bigger market than PC games in the next several years, and wanted a piece of that pie. They likely saw that most people spent more time in front of their TVs then in front of their computers, and if they could offer access to the internet for the cost of some extra software, that it'd make for a more sellable product. They likely saw (like Microsoft), that home-theater PCs are an upcoming market, and realized that the PS3 would make a perfect competitor to such devices.
Again, it's easy to dismiss Sony as stupid, but probably not a good idea. Nintendo, for all its innovation, has taken second place to Sony twice now. Microsoft, the company used to walking into a market and dominating it, had their ass handed to them the last round. Converging console functions with some PC functions is an idea with potential, and I wouldn't count on Sony botching it.
I didn't. (Score:3, Insightful)
If Sony wants me to buy the PS3, they need a killer app for it. Throwing in everything under the sun comes close to being a killer app, even if they haven't come up with a single innovation. The deal-breaker is, I already have a machine that does all that and more, and it's called a PC -- and even if I didn't, I wouldn't buy a PS3 if I could get a decent PC for about twice as much, and I can.
Re:Already exists (Score:4, Insightful)
- Macs are now using bog-standard Intel CPUs, graphics subsystems, and can even run Windows [apple.com].
- Sony, in no way, is providing an "open standard" that other manufacturers can leverage. Hmmm, sounds like that would be proprietary by definition. The PC platform has a "standard" that everyone has to walk lockstep on, courtesy of the Microsoft DirectX APIs. Older equipment can't support the new APIs and is not supported. Of course, with Microsoft as the sole provider of the APIs, well... that's a standard only in the sense that Microsoft is a 900 lbs. gorilla making the standard.
- Finally, given the need for hardware vendors (such as NVidia and ATI in the graphics card market) to differentiate themselves, it's entirely possible that when one leapfrogs the other, there can be a signficant difference between the vendors' products regardless of API compatbility. So there is not market pressure to provide such a standard.
That said, it'd be nice from a developer's standpoint, but keep this in mind -- game developers are extremely resilient and seem to handle the differentiation on the PC platform well. And when they don't, the gaming community seems to spend the $$$ to upgrade and build new systems to run the games.Re:Already exists (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nobody really does. Look at the Sega CD or 32x; the N64 RAM expansion or the 64DD (of those I do in fact own all but the 64DD myself). All of them pretty much failed, because people don't like "upgrading" a console. Developers are going to be faced with this basic problem: ALL owners of the system can play a game if it conforms to spec A. Only a fraction of the system owners can play if it conforms to spec B. Naturally they'll code for what everyone can play. The add-on never gets used, falls into obscurity, and later ends up in the clearance bin for $10 along with it's 2 or 3 games that were more demo's of the technology than actual titles.
Re:So... (Score:2, Insightful)